The New England Town Hall is upon us. PPA Executive Director John Pappas, Director of Grassroots and External Affairs Drew Lesofski, Litigation Support Network Director & Board Member Patrick Fleming, several PPA state directors and I are all gearing up to head to greater Boston to spend this Saturday afternoon with the poker community. We are all looking forward to meeting many of you there, sharing all that PPA is doing, and answering all of your questions!

The Town Hall event itself is free. We are hosting an optional charity poker tournament after the meeting. The tournament will be a lot of fun and will help support a great cause, but please be assured that you do not have to participate in the tournament to attend the Town Hall.

Please let us know if you plan to attend the Town Hall and/or play in the charity event so we can ensure enough space. Contact us TODAY at townhall@theppa.org.

Location: Clarion Inn Hotel Conference Center (link)
595 North Avenue
Wakefield, MA, 01880
Phone: (781) 245-6100

Date: Saturday, December 1, 2012
Town Hall and Q&A: 4pm ET
Charity Poker Tournament: Immediately following the Town Hall
Structure: $100 buy-in, 10,000 chips
Twenty minute blinds
10% of players will be paid

This will be a great opportunity to come meet your national PPA representatives and get the latest information about the current poker landscape!

The Poker Players Alliance’s legal team met with the DOJ earlier today in Washington DC for a status update on player repayments, and perhaps do a little lobbying on behalf of Full Tilt player points that could and should maybe someday count for something. Overall, it wasn’t very good news for players … particularly those who might be banking on the repatriation of online bankrolls at some point in 2012.

So how long will it be?

Considering that the DOJ hasn’t even set a deadline yet for when to hire an administrator to handle the Full Tilt repayment process … well, you can understand the harsh reality players face working with the government.

Read below for a report from PPA Executive Director John Pappas about what the DOJ had to say.

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The 70-page Democratic platform contains 12 references to the word “Internet” and the plank, “Internet Freedom” under the heading, “Advancing Universal Values.”

How many of the Internet references pertain to legalizing Internet poker?

Zero.

How many of the Internet references discuss the issue of Internet gaming?

Zero.

A week after Republicans approved a platform that called for a “prohibition” on Internet gaming, the Democrats seemingly ignored the issue altogether.

Delegates to the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, N.C., gave their support to the party’s platform Tuesday in the convention’s opening session.

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A plank in the Republican platform, approved earlier this week at the party’s national convention in Tampa, Fla., calls for a “prohibition” on Internet gaming and reversing December’s re-evaluation of the Federal Wire Act.

The language – listed under the heading “Making the Internet Family-Friendly” – goes against the position taken by most of the gaming industry and of the state’s Republican elected leaders.

Gov. Brian Sandoval, who addressed the Republican Convention on Tuesday, said he doesn’t support the platform language.

“We’re not going to agree on everything,” Sandoval said. “Nevada has always set the gold standard in gaming, and online gaming is the next frontier for the industry. Our state supports online poker and will continue to work to ensure a secure online gaming environment.”

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Poker players will receive an update from their top lobbying organization on legislative efforts to license and regulate online poker in the United States during a special town hall-style meeting Saturday at the Rio.

When it comes to federal efforts, however, it might be a short conversation.

The Poker Players Alliance is using the World Series of Poker, which has attracted thousands of players to Las Vegas, to update the poker community on what’s taking place in various states.

John Pappas, the alliance’s executive director, said he expects to hear from players who have been sidelined from Internet play since the April 15, 2011, crackdown on Internet poker by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Pappas will be joined by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the sponsor of House Resolution 2366, which calls for legalization of Internet poker, and professional poker players Greg Raymer – the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event champion – and Linda Johnson, who have lobbied on behalf of the Poker Players Alliance in Washington, D.C.

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Last week, I shared the news that you are cordially invited to the PPA Town Hall meeting in Las Vegas at the Rio during the World Series of Poker® on Saturday, June 30th, starting at 12:15 pm. I also mentioned that I would share details as they come available, and I have a great detail to share this week:

Key poker supporter and sponsor of H.R. 2366, the Online Poker Act, Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) will address the group and is looking forward to meeting you!

This free town hall event will include a discussion of the issues facing the poker community in Nevada and across the nation. Executive Director John Pappas, Director of Grassroots and External Affairs Drew Lesofski, Nevada State Director Lupe Soto, and I will be on hand to answer your questions regarding your poker rights. Please be sure to make plans to attend this important meeting. If you are in the Las Vegas area that day, I hope you and your poker friends will attend!

RSVP: nvtownhall@theppa.org (RSVPs are not required, but please try to let us know if you are planning to attend.)

This is a great opportunity to meet your PPA representatives and to get the latest information on the poker legislative landscape. The first 25 people who show up will receive a free PPA t-shirt! Everyone in attendance will receive a free PPA patch. We will be providing light refreshments as well.

I thank everyone who took the time to stop by the PPA WSOP booth this past weekend to discuss the poker advocacy effort and what they can do to help further the cause!

We will be back for the weekends of 6/29-7/1 and 7/7-7/9 (the opening days of the Main Event). If you are in the area one of those weekends, I hope you will stop by to talk to us about the fight. We will have PPA patches available, so please pick one up to show everyone at the WSOP that you are proud to advocate for our rights as poker players and enthusiasts!

Make sure to check the PPA Facebook and Twitter pages for up-to-the-minute info on everything we are be doing at the WSOP , to see great pictures, and to follow our real-time take on all that is going on at the WSOP

PPA is excited to announce that we will hold a town hall meeting in Las Vegas during the World Series of Poker®. The Las Vegas PPA Town Hall Meeting will be at the Rio on June 30th, immediately following the “shuffle up and deal” command – the command to be given this year by key poker supporter Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX)!

PPA Executive Director John Pappas, PPA Director of Grassroots & External Affairs Drew Lesofski, and I will be on hand for a detailed discussion on all that PPA is doing. We will be taking lots of questions and look forward to a great dialog with everyone. Please plan to attend if you are in town for the WSOP. John, Drew, and I hope to meet you there!

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Last weekend, the Poker Players Alliance joined nearly twenty Members of Congress at a House Republican policy retreat in Florida. The highlight of the conference was a poker and casino night sponsored by PPA and headlined by PPA Board Member & 2004 World Series of Poker Champion Greg “Fossilman” Raymer.

Throughout the course of the weekend, PPA Executive Director John Pappas, PPA lobbyists, and the Fossilman interacted with lawmakers and explained the merits of online poker licensing and regulation. We were pleased that Congressional champions of poker rights Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) and Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) were on hand to help make the case to their House colleagues for a regulatory framework that would provide strong consumer protections, bring in revenue without raising taxes, and restore personal freedoms.

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I’m fairly certain Barack Obama has known a little bit about the online poker “situation” for a while … at least since the White House released its Strategy to Protect Online Consumers and Support Innovation and National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace on April 15, 2011.

And you gotta think Obama probably got briefed as the DOJ officially changed its position on the Wire Act, September 23rd — the first day of Fall, and the same day the DOJ labeled Full Tilt Poker a Ponzi scheme and took all of Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst’s money. But why then did the ever-PR-conscious DOJ wait some 60 business days later until December 23rd — the quietest media day of the year — before telling the rest of America about the Executive Branch’s significant change of digital heart?

I suppose it might not even matter at this point; SOPA and PIPA have been tabled for now, Megaupload has been slapped hard with the same government quarantine the Feds beta-tested on online poker sites, and Kim Dotcom is in jail awaiting a fate that Full Tilt and PokerStars lawyers say he coulda avoided simply by changing his name to Kim Dotnet!

OK, maybe I get a little factually carried away sometimes jest … but John Pappas has a serious message for the President — essentially a 22-second synopsis of all those emails and tweets from the Poker Player Alliance’s 1.2 million members, and a plea for “common sense public policy” on the eve of what could be Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address.

I have great news to share with everyone. There will be TWO hearings on the online poker issue this week!

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding a hearing to examine the impact of Internet gaming regulation on Indian tribes on Thursday, November 17th at 2:15 PM ET. PPA Chairman former Sen. D’Amato will testify for PPA, to be accompanied by Executive Director John Pappas.

The Senate committee hearing is excellent news for the poker community, as this is not the type of hearing where the poker community would necessarily expect to be invited to provide testimony. The invitation was due both to Sen. D’Amato’s esteemed background and to the activism of all of us in the poker community. Getting a hearing scheduled prior to the Thanksgiving recess was an accomplishment as well. For more, please click here to read PPA’s statement on the issue of tribal online poker, and please click here for details on this important hearing.

Additionally, the U.S. House Subcommittee for Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade will hold another hearing on Internet gaming on Friday, November 18th at 9 AM ET. Please click here for more on this important hearing, and please click here to read PPA’s memo to the subcommittee regarding bot detection technology, how sites handle Internet service disruptions, and discussion of other issues important to the poker community.

These hearings are hard evidence of the great work the poker community has been doing to ensure lawmakers hear from us. I thank everyone for taking the steps necessary to ensure our elected representatives understand that we poker enthusiasts will not back down and will not simply go away!

Thank you again for your continued support!

As you know, the House Subcommittee for Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade held a hearing [yesterday] examining the potential regulation of Internet gambling.  The hearing entitled, “Internet Gambling: Is There a Safe Bet?” called upon a variety of witnesses to discuss how best Internet gambling can be regulated in the U.S.  Among the witnesses was Poker Player Alliance Chairman and former Senator, Alfonse D’Amato.  A complete list of witnesses and their full testimonies is available here. You can also watch the full 2 ½ hour Committee hearing on CSPAN.com here.

Meeting with members before and after the hearing, I was immensely proud to hear every lawmaker tell us that they are being contacted by poker players. The question on the lawmakers’ minds was not “if” internet poker should be regulated, but rather “how” regulation should look.

Senator D’Amato did an exceptional job and delivered impassioned remarks defending your right to play.  He urged Congress to adopt rules and regulations to ensure American consumers have a safe marketplace in which to play poker on the Internet.  In fact, when it came to consumer protections the conclusion of every witness before the Committee was that regulation was far better than the status quo.  And, more importantly, that sentiment was also expressed almost unanimously by the lawmakers who attended the hearing.  The question on the lawmakers’ minds was not “if” internet poker should be regulated, but rather “how” should regulation look.

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The big news this week is PPA’s meeting with the Department of Justice regarding player funds locked up on Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and Ultimate Bet. Needless to say, this is at the forefront of the concerns of the membership and of the PPA, so I am pleased to report that your PPA has been proactive in pushing for restitution for our members.

From Executive Director John Pappas:

“We still have an open dialogue with [the DOJ] and look forward to more productive conversations down the road. We plan to follow up to make sure the DOJ gets a guarantee that players get restitution through any deal with new Full Tilt management.”

For more on this important story, please check out Poker Players Alliance Meets with DOJ Regarding Full Tilt Poker Player Funds -  Poker News (October 7, 2011).

In other news …

The World Series of Panel-discussions continues with what I like to think of as a circuit event on Wednesday. The Focus group has invited me and three others for a moderated roundtable that you could call Meet the Poker if David Gregory’s show were relegated to ESPN3.

But it should make for vigorous discourse providing valuable information … kinda like a think-tank for couch-based researchers and analysts. Details on the academic equivalent to a call-in show:

Toll-free Dial-In Number: (866) 951-1151

International Dial-In Number: (201) 590-2255

United Kingdom +44 08003581576

Conference # : 4999006

Join us for this roundtable teleconference on Wednesday May 18, 2011 at 10:00am PT/1:00pm ET to learn more about the economics of the multi-billion online gambling market and recent US government gaming legislation.

Topics include:

1. The history of today’s online gaming market
2. How Las Vegas feels about online gaming
3. “Black Friday” and its meaning for the online gaming business
4. What the online gaming business will look like in 2012

Moderator:

Michael Damphousse, CEO/CMO, Green Leads

Panelists:

David G. Schwartz, Director of Center for Gambling Research-UNLV
Dan Michalski, Founder/Editor, Pokerati.com
John Pappas, Executive Director, PPA (Poker Players Alliance)
Greg Raymer, 2004 WSOP Champion and Lawyer

Poker players (who tend to bitch the most?) love to hate on the Poker Players Alliance, the most vocal of DC advocacy groups for poker-related matters, and, obv disclosure, an advertiser of ours here at Pokerati. Discern for yourself my own possible bias, but they are merely a small player in the DC poli-poker game. The AGA, for example, also wants to see legalized online poker (and other casino games) … but they are not voicing any protest.

Strategic decisions notwithstanding, the PPA sees the federal indictment of close associates to some of their board members as an attack on poker, and are positioning themselves as a rebel poker alliance.

That’s my take, not theirs, on the video statement put out by their Executive Director John Pappas. And below is additional statement from the PPA that many players have been clamoring for.

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Only two states in the US have no legal gambling — Hawaii and Utah. Could be just one soon, say supporters and opponents alike of a bill in Hawaii that would specifically legalize Texas Hold’em and Omaha poker, live and online.

The bill, which passed out of committee yesterday, looks to make Hawaii a destination for big-time live (and televised) poker events … as well as a potential home base for online sites serving US players … by designating the foundations of Pokerati NLH/PLO as games of skill, not played against a casino “house” and therefore exempt from state gambling prohibitions.

PPA Exec Dir. John Pappas supplied written testimony for the hearing, suggesting that the way this current bill is crafted could be problematically prohibitive, as it seeks to charge $100 million for a server license and impose a 20 percent tax on all wagers while potentially challenging federal law. Pappas, however, did not provide any statement on the economic impact such a law would have on Waikiki vendors selling T-shirts like these:

Surf’s Up by Pokerati Generic T-Shirt Shoppe

The Hawaii poker bill — originally written supposedly to provide a tax holiday for buying school supplies — passed out of the Economic Revitalization & Business Committee on a 7-1 vote, and the House Judiciary Committee, 9-3. It now moves on to the House Finance Committee.

(Mahalo Poker Gnome for the heads-up.)